Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.

It's a day of reflection and to remember all that was lost due to the heinous Nazi regime and the abject silence of those who knew what was happening but chose not to act. It's also a day to remember acts of heroism in the face of impossible odds.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is one such group of acts. It happened 63 years ago this week (starting April 19, 1943) as a response to the Nazi liquidation of the ghetto sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death in Treblinka. Moshe Arens, a Knesset member and academic, has suggested that the Jewish group Betar had a much greater role in the uprising than previously considered.

On the basis of research into Jewish, Polish and German sources, as well as interviews with surviving participants in Israel and Poland, Arens has produced articles on the subject published in Jewish scholarly journals. He argues that the commonly accepted narrative of the uprising, which assigns Betar a peripheral role at best, is skewed. Betar's fighters were the best armed and trained in the ghetto, he says. It was Betar that raised the Jewish and Polish flags that agitated the German high command and transfixed the Polish population watching the battle from afar, and it was to the Betar sector that Stroop referred when he described the "main Jewish battle group."

Betar's leaders were killed in battle while key leaders in the other Jewish camp, dominated by left-wing Labor Zionists, survived. It was the latter's version that set the tone of the subsequent narrative, leaving a large hole at the center of one of the epics of modern Jewish history by playing down, or totally ignoring, Betar's role. Despite Arens's admittedly partisan interest in the subject, his writing avoids polemics and his argument is backed by well annotated sources.

UPDATE:
Iran, the modern day heir apparent to the Nazis, have continued their war of words against Israel. Israel, in turn, has replied - calling Iran the most dangerous threat to Jews since the Nazis. And have no fear, but the Palestinians want Iran to have the bomb. If the Palestinians want it, then it must be good. [that's sarcasm for you folks whose sarcasm detectors have pegged out.]